


Ghosts in the Machine

by Kalypso



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Gen, donna fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:49:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A remark from Miss Evangelista prompts River Song to think about Donna.  Can they help her from inside the Library?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AJHall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/gifts).



> This is a story I have been thinking about ever since Donna left the TARDIS in _Journey's End_ , but it finally came into focus when River appeared on Trenzalore in _The Name of the Doctor_. There's a reference to a short piece I wrote about the Doctor, [The Turn of the Screwdriver](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1054932), but it's not essential to the understanding of this one.
> 
> My thanks to [fengirl88](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88) for some very helpful advice.

We're eating bergamot ice creams in a Venetian piazza. I had a fancy to look up Casanova, as I never got round to it while I was alive, but he turned out too puppyish for my mood, and Anita seemed to like him, so I've left her a clear field. I might try an older edition later.

We should come back for the Carnival, once we've put the children to bed. In the meantime, all three of them are playing by the canal; we promised them a ride on a gondola once we've finished the ice creams. I smile at Miss Evangelista; it's hard not to. The lace and bows of eighteenth-century dress suit her perfectly. I'm thinking that this afterlife in the Library suits her, too, more than any of us. She's got her looks back, kept most of her intelligence, and best of all she's blossomed on finding that people actually like her.

But even she has a shadow in her eyes, sometimes, and I can see it now as she watches the children play.

"They were Donna's children, you know?" she says.

"Donna's?"

"Ella and Josh. And everyone else's, too. It was easier to simulate the same pair of children for everyone held in the Library memory."

" _Everyone_ had children?"

"If they wanted them. CAL - Charlotte - tried to supply what she saw in their dreams, and Donna was one of those who dreamed of motherhood. I told her the children weren't real, but she couldn't accept that. I think she knew it was true, but she loved them so fiercely; in her virtual memory they were her own, and had been for years, even though in reality it was only minutes."

I can understand that. I didn't dream of motherhood, I've never believed they're mine, and I know they're not real. But I've killed to protect them; if you'd had my early life, you'd know why. The bandits I killed weren't real either, but you forget that when your instincts kick in.

And me? I'm not real. I'm a ghost.

"But Donna didn't know Charlotte?" I ask.

"No, nobody saw Charlotte then. She was keeping everyone alive in the database."

I think of Donna losing her children, and I remember the look in Amy and Rory's eyes when they realised their baby had gone for ever, and they would never have more than fleeting glimpses of the woman I became. It wasn't their fault, and they wouldn't talk about it, but I could always read their pain and guilt.

And then we lost them, too. That seemed to stir up the Doctor's own pain and guilt about so many of his friends. He poured it all out one night, and that was when I heard what had happened to Donna. At the time, I didn't work out why he looked so shifty when he started talking about having to save somebody without asking her whether she wanted saving.

So I knew her story, but there's a difference between knowing Him Indoors used to travel with another redhead before Amy and actually meeting her - Donna Noble, fizzing with life and curiosity and kindness. I met her in the Library the day I died; naturally, she stuck in my memory. And now I have her children.

"Donna was married here, wasn't she?"

The Doctor said Donna had a thing about getting married - she'd been a bride the first time he saw her, and the last. Afraid of being left on the shelf, though I could have told her a wedding's no guarantee against that... But he also mentioned another time - he'd been vague about when and where, for reasons I only now understand - when she'd been married in some kind of virtual reality, and she wasn't sure afterwards whether that husband had been real. They'd tried to find him, but couldn't trace anyone with that name.

"Yes, she married one of the Saved."

"So he _was_ real? Not a simulation, like the children?"

Miss Evangelista frowns. "I think so. CAL would know."

We walk down to the quay, where the Daves are negotiating with a gondolier. We're never short of cash in this virtual world, so we hire two; I see to it that Josh and Ella board safely with the Daves, then hand Charlotte down to Miss Evangelista before stepping in myself. Both boats pull out into the lagoon.

I wait until we're out of earshot of the other gondola, then turn to the girl.

"Charlotte, there's some information I'd like to access about one of the people you saved."

There's an imperceptible change in her face when she shifts from Charlotte to CAL; suddenly, you sense the hard drive behind her. "Who are you looking for?"

"Donna Noble's husband."

I can see her mind whirring for a moment.

"Daj Arivel Gassaper, native of the planet Flane. Visited the Library to study Izaak Walton. Renamed Lee McAvoy while stored here."

"Why the name change?"

"It had to be something suitable for early 21st-century Britain."

That makes sense. She's already told me that, because of the strain caused by saving all those extra minds to the hard drive, she kept them in a single environment, and picked one that was reasonably low-tech. Now we're down to a handful, it's practical to offer the whole of time and space again, or at any rate all that was known to the 50th century, when the Library was built.

"Has he ever contacted us?"

"Once. He said he was lonely."

I nod my thanks, and she reverts to Charlotte; as if to emphasise the change, she scrambles along the boat to chat to the gondolier.

It's possible to communicate to and from the Library, via CAL. Most of our crew contacted their relatives, with varying results; it's not easy for them, getting a message from the dead. Proper Dave keeps up a correspondence, but Anita's brother thanked her for explaining where she was and made it clear that was an end of it. The Evangelistas never replied at all.

But word must have got out through one of the families, because there are assorted letters from cranks and do-gooders. I had those when I was a prisoner in the Storm Cage, too, though there are fewer marriage offers now. We ignore that sort.

We do reply to messages from the Library survivors - the Saved who returned to the real worlds. A lot of them had trouble readjusting after a century out of circulation, finding their families dead and their job skills out of date, and some seem to find comfort in writing to us.

The person _I'm_ always waiting to hear from, of course, is the Doctor, but there's been nothing... so far. I do have news, though. Vastra calls me up from time to time, using her own methods; we'd always kept in touch, since Demons Run, and she tracked me down here eventually. She says the Doctor turned up in London in 1892, alone and in a terrible funk. He's sulking on a cloud over the city - don't suppose that helps with the pea-soupers - though he comes down to visit her and Jenny in Paternoster Row sometimes. He won't say what's wrong, but she's noticed he won't enter the library in their house, so it's not hard to guess what's happened in his timeline: that last date in Daryllium, when he gave me the screwdriver so that I could bring it to the Library.

He'll be all right, in the end. He often says, when he loses a companion, that he can't go through that again and he'll keep to himself. But then he finds another, or they find him. And his life goes on; it's just that I'm not around to interrupt it any more.

"What are you planning?" asks Miss Evangelista.

I smile at her. "We're going to rescue Donna."

Her face lights up. "How?"

"I told you what happened to her."

She nods. "Donna absorbed the Doctor's consciousness in a... a meta-crisis? But he said it was too much for a human brain, so he locked it off, and took her home and told her family she could never be reminded of anything to do with him in case she found it again."

"Well, I know as much as anyone about human-Time Lord hybrids, and I say that's bollocks. The first bit _is_ true, because Donna was different from me. Her DNA wasn't spliced at conception, like mine, and a graft in later life would struggle to cope. The Doctor was right about _that_."

"But protecting her from all knowledge of it?"

"No. Let me explain." I settle back on the cushions. "Things I don't advise trying to fit into your brain: The Time Vortex. Or 4022 library users. Or the Doctor's sense of logic."

Miss Evangelista laughs.

"Exactly. The last of those was a joke. The Time Vortex and the patterns of 4022 library users would kill anyone, human or Time Lord, in a matter of minutes. The Doctor's sense of logic wouldn't. Trust me, it's not a large thing."

"So what's the difference between the species?"

"A human brain would burn out in fewer minutes than a Time Lord, because the Gallifreyans managed to fit more on the inside."

"Like a neural version of the Doctor's TARDIS?"

"Not _that_ much more. Though no doubt someone was working on it."

She looks thoughtful. Her own intelligence was inflated by digital error.

"Did I tell you about Rose Tyler?" I continue. "She absorbed the Time Vortex to save the Doctor. It would have killed her if he hadn't removed it; doing that did kill _him_ , and he had to regenerate. I don't think Rose remembered much of what happened with the Vortex, which was for the best. But she didn't just remember the Doctor, she went on travelling with him."

"So Rose absorbed something too big even for the Doctor, but once it had gone she was fine. While Donna absorbed something exactly the size of the Doctor, and was put into quarantine for life. You think we can help?"

I close my eyes against the sun. "My father, Rory, could remember spending two thousand years as an Auton Centurion in another timeline. But not all the time, he said. It was like having a door in his head; he could keep it shut." People underestimated Rory. He taught himself how to do that. 

I open my eyes again. "It's not the same thing, but it's the same principle. You shut the door, you lock it, but you don't have to plaster it over and pretend it never existed. In fact, it's easier to avoid when you know what it is. There's less chance of stumbling against it by accident. I bet Donna still dreams of her adventures..."

"Of her children," says Miss Evangelista, with conviction.

"The Library has every book ever written on mental techniques and disciplines. So we send the most advanced knowledge to somebody with the strongest possible motive for rescuing Donna."

"Her husband, Lee!" She claps her hands. "But... Donna must have died three thousand years ago?"

"I know a man who can help him get there - a former Time Agent, calls himself Jack." The Doctor left him behind too, but we met more than once in bars across the galaxies and compared notes. "I think he knew Donna briefly, and he also complained about losing two years in a Time Agency mindwipe."

"So he'd sympathise." Miss Evangelista's brow furrows. "But didn't you say that Donna married on Earth?"

"So she finds herself with two husbands! You expect _me_ to consider that a problem? She can choose one, or both, or neither. What matters is that she can _choose_."

And just suppose she rejects all those options, if she decides to open her door and go out in a blaze? Again, _her choice_. I remember the Doctor weeping when he admitted Donna had said "No" as he moved to save her. He had the very best of intentions; he always does. "There was no time to discuss it," he whispered. "If I hadn't done it then, she'd have died."

But I have all the time in the world.

The gondoliers steer us across the lagoon. I see the sunlight glinting on the horses of San Marco, and Anita strolling through the Piazzetta with her new beau. Ella and Josh are waving at Charlotte from the other boat. Tonight we will go to the Carnival.

The best way to avoid looking at the door is to keep having adventures. To travel through new worlds and old histories. To meet the most interesting people the universe can offer. To have children. To eat ice cream. To fill your mind with ideas and memories.

I will need to find the door out of the Library one day, but my ghost can wait here a while yet.


End file.
